The Four Stages of Healing
by Citiesofcolor
Summary: "It's then, late that night when everyone else has gone to fly CAP or sleep and Kara's still nursing her rotgut, that she shows up." Missing scene in Torn. Kara gets a wake-up call.


**Title: **The Four Stages of Healing

**Rating:** K+

**Characters/Pairings:** Laura, Kara**  
**

**Warnings: **References to torture

**Word count: **3,395

**Summary: "**It's then, late that night when everyone else has gone to fly CAP or sleep and Kara's still nursing her rotgut, that she shows up." Missing scene in Torn. Kara gets a wake-up call.

**A/N: **This fic owes its entire existence to me not wanting to face emotional pain in my Xena: Warrior Princess watch, so there's that. Loosely inspired by the quote below. Tons of thanks to everyone who handheld and kept me company while writing this (kalliopephoenix, marzipanilla, simplyprologue, and akissandacloak) and fragrantwoods for her awesome beta skills.

* * *

"All her bright golden hair

Tarnished with rust,

She that was young and fair

Fallen to the dust."

- _Requiescat_ by Oscar Wilde

* * *

They don't talk about New Caprica. No one does. It's a wound left to fester.

She's lost. Everything hurts. Nothing is good.

She doesn't know.

She doesn't know anything anymore.

So she votes, votes, votes. It's the only way she knows how to deal with it. It takes away the bitter taste in her mouth, if only for a short time, and she's just so angry now that sometimes she can't see or hear or feel anything but the clothes scratching on her skin and New Caprica heavy in her chest.

So she votes, and she fraks, and she drinks, and she smokes, and then she votes some more, all the while praying that this will be the one that takes it all away. She just wants Starbuck back, to put away Kara, who ate from Leoben's hand, and remember what it was like to blast cylons out of the frakking sky.

But nothing works, and she can't shake it, and no one can touch her except Sammy. Poor Sammy, who tries and wants to talk, but she can't do that either because when she tries it feels like she's unzipping her skin and letting him hold her insides in his hands. She wants him and wants him to want her back, but she also wants him to just go away, to leave her alone, to stop pushing. She can't, and she's sorry, because he's her husband and she likes-him-loves-him, but he just doesn't get it. No one does. Not Lee, not the Old Man, not the new pilots who pined for their lost brethren with full bellies and comfortable beds.

She thinks these things, alone in the hollow rec room, wallowing in the mire. Her sidearm still sits on the table, the ejected round right next to it. Tigh's glass sits across from her, the only evidence there was ever anyone else here with her.

She reaches over, picks up the bullet and rolls it between her fingers.

_You were like a daughter to me once. No more. You're a malcontent and a cancer. And I won't have you on my ship._

He doesn't understand.

But he's right

He's right.

She's a coward, cancer, just like her momma always said. Sucking out the healthy and growing black and ugly, crowding out the good.

He's right, and her momma's right, and somehow this scares her more than anything else. Kara Thrace isn't a coward. Kara Thrace is a soldier, and if Starbuck won't come back on her own, she'll just have to make her, rebuild her out of cannibalized scraps and broken down parts, just like the Blackbird.

It's then, late that night when everyone else has gone to fly CAP or sleep and Kara's still nursing her rotgut, that she shows up.

Her heels give her away before the perfume, both relics of a more civilized time, clicking hollowly on the deck and resonating like the heartbeat of the ship. Kara hears a firm voice dismissing bodyguards, telling them to wait outside the rec room doors, then the steady click of heels coming closer.

Laura Roslin looks nothing like she'd last seen her on New Caprica, all mussed hair and chapped hands and wool sweaters. And she realizes this is the first time they've been together since the... well... since everything.

She looks tired, hair tied half-up with a bit of string and her shirt not-quite-untucked from her skirt, but getting there. The skin around her eyes is tight, lines standing out more than normal. She's worlds removed from Ms. Roslin, schoolteacher. Her suit is wrinkled, but clean, and she looks so much like the president again that Kara hates her. If only it was so easy for her to slip back into her flight suit and feel like Starbuck again.

Laura sits down next to her, shrugging out of her jacket and kicking off her heels, settling with a sigh that makes her sound like she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders. Kara realizes, rather belatedly, that she probably does now, after a fashion at least. Frakking fantastic for her, then.  
Kara doesn't know what to say, never has. She's always been a bit confused by this woman, the leader-prophet who turned out to be neither and both at the same time. Now, nearly three sheets to the wind, Kara's in even less of a mood to figure her out, so she just shrugs and tries to ignore her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Laura fix her with a stare. She just keeps ignoring her. Laura had come here for a reason, to get something from her probably, but no frakking way is Kara going to make it easy for her. If Laura wanted to talk she'd have to start it herself.

She takes a swig from the bottle deliberately, flippantly, rubbing it in Laura's face. She's not quite sure why she wants to, but there's something mean in her chest tonight.

"Can I have a drink?"

The question catches Kara a little off guard, but she controls herself and manages to not turn and face her. The question is funny, a little absurd, and Kara almost snorts. She manages to not do that either, instead pushing a glass half-heartedly in her direction. Laura waits for a moment, expecting the bottle to follow, but Kara just takes another swig.

Laura looks at her like she's about to start chastising, as if Kara's one of Laura's students, but instead, she just reaches over and takes it from Kara's hand. Kara watches, pouting, as Laura fills the glass up and then hands the bottle back. Laura lifts the glass to her lips, meditative, and Kara tries to not let the glee show on her face.

_Wait for it..._

_Wait for it..._

_Wait for it..._

Laura takes a sip, feels the burn of solvent-grade alcohol, coughs, and then makes a face.

This time, Kara does snort.

Instead of bristling like she expects her to, Laura cracks a lopsided, tight smile and lets out a breath that ends up being something between a laugh and another sigh. They lapse back into uncommunicative silence again, Laura looking serene and sipping her drink (taking special care, Kara notices, to not choke), while Kara pointedly ignores her, hoping that Laura would get bored and just leave, all the words she obviously wants to say left unsaid.

Something about this woman had always left Kara a little uncomfortable. Off balance. What it is, she doesn't know exactly. The way she plays her face like a mask, something to hide her thoughts behind? Something in her eyes, maybe?

_"Watch the eyes, Kara baby."_ Momma had told her.

But right now Laura doesn't seem intimidating. Not with her hair like that and her bare feet and her tired face. She's looking into her glass, patient-like, as if she waits long enough the secrets of the universe will reveal themselves to her in the way the light filters through the smudged thumbprints littering the outside. Moments pass, and Kara starts to get restless. It's probably been less than five minutes since Laura got here, but Kara's getting tired of whatever game she's playing.

Only two more minutes pass with Laura still looking like she's got all the time in the world, and Kara Thrace is officially done with waiting.

"The Old Man send you?" Kara snaps finally, pushing the bottle away and slumping down in her chair like a rebellious teenager.

Laura looks up, face neutral, and Kara hates her, hates the practiced, careful way her nails tap on the outside of her glass as if they're sitting at a café back on Caprica, like nothing's changed.

"No." Laura replies, voice even, but with an edge of finality to it. "I wanted to see what you've done myself."

Kara sees red for a moment, feels her whole body go hot.

"What _I've_ done?" She bites, pitching forward defensively in her chair.

Laura flinches at the sudden movement, then pointedly looks at her like she's a child throwing a tantrum.

"You know that's not what I meant, Kara. I wanted to see you."

Kara falls back, crosses her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, well, look all you want Madame Vice President." She scoffs, not caring about the hurt that flashes across Laura's face. They might have shared a side once, but that was a long time ago, back when Kara was Kara and not... whoever she was now.

Whatever she was now.

Laura doesn't stay quiet for very long this time. And when she speaks again it's in a no-nonsense tone that makes it clear she's not asking a question.

"I heard about Felix Gaeta and the Circle, Kara."

_Frak her and her holier-than-thou bullshit._

"Come to hear me beg for forgiveness, Madam VP?" She snarls, purposely stressing the V. "Come to make me apologize for taking - wait - _almost_ taking an innocent life?"

She sees Laura's hand tighten around the glass, feels a deep twist of satisfaction that she's finally hit a weak spot.

"If I remember correctly, you shouldn't be the one preaching about innocence." Kara jeers. "Or have you forgotten about the _Olympic Carrier_?"

Laura's knuckles go white, and the triumph swells. She's really hit a nerve, and it feels so _good_. She wants to push her, make her lash out. She wants to make Laura feel the way she feels all the time now, this icy woman who never lets on to anyone about what she's really thinking. She wants to hurt, wants to draw blood. She's Kara Thrace, and she's vicious.

"How many scraps of paper in your pocket now, Madame Vice President? Because I think Helena Cain would beg to differ with your holier-than-thou bullshit."  
Laura fixes her with an icy stare, warning her from continuing, but Kara ignores it. She's out for blood now.

"Really, I think you should take it up with every single person who died on New Cap, VP," she sneers, meeting Laura's gaze evenly, "Because, let's face it. You didn't have the balls to steal the election."

Laura looks away from her, instead focusing back on her drink. Kara assesses the situation quickly, like a battle. She sees a weakness in Laura, and jabs one last time, driving the knife home.

"What right do you have, to counsel me, when you've got the blood of hundreds on your ha-"

"Enough!" Laura yells.

Kara is taken aback by the force of her anger, and even more by the fact that Laura seems just as shocked as she is.

Laura drops her head in her hands or a moment, breathing hard, and Kara can see through the tousled red hair that she's massaging her temples with her fingers.

"Kara, all I came here for was to tell you that this needs to stop. The violence, the retribution. It all has to stop."

She looks away from Laura, takes a swig from the bottle, tries to be as disrespectful as possible.

"I'm issuing a blanket pardon, Kara."

The world tips. It's like the ground has dropped out from under her feet.

"What?" She says it calmly at first, dispassionate, trying to keep control. Maybe she'd misheard. That couldn't be right.

"You heard me. I'm issuing a blanket pardon. There is to be no legal action taken against anyone for what they've done on New Caprica."

Kara jumps up so quickly her chair falls backwards.

No. No. _No._ This can't be happening.

She's pacing, like her skin is too tight, like her hands are itching, like something wild is in her chest and it's clawing to get out.

"After everything those frakking traitors did, collaborating with the enemy?" She can feel herself losing it, feel the control slipping through her fingers like sand. "You're just going to let them _go_?"

She finds she's screaming now, and it still doesn't make sense, and all she can see is Leoben's smirk.

_I'll see you soon._

Laura, coolly watching this whole time, takes a breath.

"Yes."

She can't help herself, and throws an abandoned glass left behind on a nearby table. It hits the wall and shatters, pieces falling like ice and scattering over the floor. Laura jumps at the sound, startled, but she calms with the same speed as before, and Kara hates her even more.

"They imprisoned us! Tortured us!" She screams, pacing, the wild thing in her chest clawing and clawing until she can't breathe.

"They took _everything_!" She's seeing red now, blind to the world but the roaring in her ears and the tension in her palms.

"They took my daughter, Laura! My daughter."

She doesn't realize what she's said until the sympathy registers on Laura's face, and it hits her.

_They took my daughter._

Kacey had never been her daughter to keep.

_My daughter._

She gets cold all over, inside and out, cold as Laura's eyes. The fire is gone, and all that's left is a hard pit in her stomach.

She walks over slowly, deliberately, rights her chair, and sits. Laura looks uncertain, her eyes guarded, like she's dealing with a wild animal who might bite at any moment. Kara guesses that she is.

She takes the bottle in her hands, and very carefully pours a finger of the rotgut into Laura's forgotten glass, watching the alcohol swirl up around the sides to keep from looking anywhere else. She sits back, takes a sip, and meets Laura's eyes.

"Tigh was right. Nobody who didn't go through it can understand." She swallows, fixes her with her coldest stare, and lets her lip curl in disgust. "Especially not you."

Silence from Laura, but she sees the anger flash in her eyes, so hot that Kara is afraid for a moment she's going to slap her. But Laura calms with the same practiced speed, face hardening into impassivity, a politician's poker face. She moves her hands to the buttons on her blouse.

"Oh, you don't think I understand what it was like?"

She starts unbuttoning it, her jerking fingers pulling at the material the only hint at how angry she really is, eyes pinning Kara to her chair. Green fabric falls away slowly like a parting curtain, a gray bra standing out in sharp contrast to pale skin. Through the anger, something still registers that this is Laura Roslin, soon-to-be_ President of the godsdamn Colonies_ that is taking off her shirt, not Laura Roslin, teacher, and Kara looks away in embarrassment. Her face goes hot, and she feels like a coward, like somehow she's let Laura win. Yet another new piece to add to Kara Thrace, another piece of Starbuck the courageous missing, left behind in the smoking wreckage of that mudball.

"No, Lieutenant Thrace. You look."

Her voice is as hard as stone, so Kara does.

Laura's shifted away in her chair, and the shirt hangs from her shoulders, completely open. A long string of raised welts is visible along her side, shiny with fresh-healed skin, unmistakably marks of violence.

Kara feels sick to her stomach at the sight of it, so incongruous on Laura with her pencil skirts and heels and glasses.

"Wha-" She can't finish her question.

Laura stares at the opposite wall, looking right past Kara.

"Something like a cattle prod, I imagine." She says mechanically. "I never saw what they used."

Kara doesn't know what to say. Her mind has suddenly stopped working.

"I..." She starts, trying to gather up the icy rage she'd just had moments before, and finds that it's deserted her.

Laura sits preternaturally still, almost motionless but for the rise and fall of her chest, then raises her shoulders a little, lets the rest of the shirt slip down her arms. There are marks on her back too, long ones, healed over. Laura takes it, folds it, and lays it in her lap.

She looks Kara in the eyes, forcing her to meet her gaze.

"Do you still think I don't know what it was like, Lieutenant Thrace?"

Laura's voice is thin and quiet in the space of the rec room. Kara doesn't answer, just looks away.

Laura sighs, letting out a heavy breath like she's been holding it in her lungs this whole time.

When Kara gets up the courage to look at Laura again, it's not a prophet she sees, not the president, not even schoolteacher or symbol or resistance member. What she sees is Laura, human, and the fight slowly drains out of Kara. She realizes that she's exhausted really, and drunk, and miserable, that she's not so much as comforted by the alcohol as she is numbed, and, for the first time in weeks maybe, she doesn't like it.

She sets the bottle down on the table, pushes it away.

Laura sees, and the expression in her eyes changes. She seems to withdraw a bit, the burning intensity cooling.

"This has to stop, Kara. It's the only way to move on. We have to let it go."

Kara feels tears prick her eyes, and she quickly swipes them away with the back of her hand.

"What if I can't?" She whispers, voice breaking.

Laura reaches over, gently touches her arm.

"I know you can, Starbuck." She says, standing up and shrugging on her shirt. She buttons it up deftly, giving Kara a chance to process what she just said.

Starbuck.

Laura had called her Starbuck.

"But I'm not her anymore." She chokes out, shame creeping in her every pore. How could she have let this happen? How could she have gotten so lost?

She looks up at Laura, and sees that her eyes are wet too. Laura takes a strand of long blonde hair in her fingers and smiles gently, sadly.

"You might not look like her right now, but Kara, you've always been Starbuck."

Laura rolls the strand between her fingers once, twice, then lets it go. Kara doesn't feel it, too light and weightless to make any sort of impact. It's insubstantial really. Nothing.

Laura crossed her arms around her waist, and leans back on her heels a bit.

"I know you can do it, Starbuck." She says. "We've all got another chance here."

Kara doesn't know what to say, to even begin to express it. Laura smiles again, wistful this time, and then turns to leave.

On the way out, she snags the bottle in her hands from off the table, tucks it under her arm.

Kara watches her go, glad to have a little bit of peace to just think.

Laura's heels click on the deck plating like before, tapping out a sound like a heartbeat. It echoes hollowly in the metal, fading, until she can't hear it anymore. All that's left is the empty silence in the rec room and her.

But, she realizes, it's not silent. In the quiet, she can hear the ship engines vibrating, the air recyclers hissing. She's surrounded by life, on the ship and in the ship itself. _Galactica_, breathing around them, keeping them safe.

Keeping _her_ safe.

She leans back in her chair, and moves to prop up her feet on the table when she sees something glinting on the floor. She reaches for it, puzzled.

The bullet.

Laura must have knocked it off the table when she took the bottle.

She rolls it in her fingers again, feels the light weight of it, cold in her hands. It was hard, significant. It had weight, meaning.

She remembers Laura letting go of her hair, the way it felt like nothing.

It was nothing.

Kara picks up a strand, runs her fingers over it slowly.

The hair was nothing.

"You might not look like her." Laura had said.

She tosses the bullet up in the air once, catches it. It is solid in her palms. Kara sits upright and slips the bullet in her pocket.

Kara puts her gun back in its holster and stands up, the sheath of her knife snagging on the seam of her trousers.

_Her knife._

She's worn it every day since coming back from New Caprica.

Kara runs her fingers through her hair one more time, an idea taking shape. She knows now what she has to do.

As Kara walks out of the rec room, purpose set deep in her bones, her footsteps resonate in the metal, matching the heartbeat of _Galactica_.


End file.
